Elfen Liner Notes : Building My Nephew's Harem
by Gojirob
Summary: Meet Emiko, Yuka's mother. The mostly-unseen landlady of Maple House reacts to the events of the series, including her daughter's obsession, her nephew's pain, and the many girls who come to live on her property - including one she cares for but fears, with good reason. But will her family's past haunt them all? Note : This ties in to 'Long Live The Queen' especially 'Horns'.
1. Chapter 1

Elfen Liner Notes : Building My Nephew's Harem

By Rob Morris

_**Prologue**_

_**Kanagawa Prefecture - 1994**_

Emiko recalled thinking that her sister was marrying a very striking man. Some years later, she recalled thinking how sturdy he looked as her sister, never the world's healthiest creature, died not long after giving birth to their second child. Just this past summer she recalled feeling his lips pressed against hers. All the children were at a neighbor's house, and the forbidden thoughts of two widowed people were given free rein.

"Yes, that's him."

The attendant placed the severed head back into cold storage.

"Ma'am, this next one is even worse. I would prefer not to raise the sheet entirely."

*_Will she ever shut up_?* is the thought Emiko had when first meeting her niece. *_Sister, you couldn't have taken this one with you?_* was a later thought. She felt bad about thinking that even as she did. Now, she only felt numb.

"She deserves to be seen off as she is."

The officials who had informed her of the murders emphatically warned her to not eat or drink anything if possible before coming. She was glad for this. The girl had not yet been undressed, nor had her eyes been closed. Those eyes held—and likely always would hold—a look of stunned terror, a look of something awful happening, something awful and unbelievable. That thing, whatever it had been, had split her cleanly in two and exposed her spinal cord in two spots.

"Where's the boy's body?"

The attendant gladly covered the remains and shook his head.

"They didn't tell you?"

She found herself forced to leave the room. Her nephew was physically intact, but would require massive psychiatric care for some time. He had been found tenderly cradling his little sister's upper torso when the authorities arrived. He did not recognize his Aunt, though the name of her daughter had bled out, along with other names including his sister's, in-between recitations of a mantra.

*_**You Have To Stop**_.*

Police reached the conclusion that this was the boy's plea to his family's killer, a regional spree killer they had come to call Kaze No Kaede, for the wind that rustled through the maple trees before evidence of the killer's works was found. The killer left no fingerprints, nor evidence of how they could do things like decapitate a grown man, split a little girl in two, or tear a hole in the roof of a train car. Emiko knew all too well that families had been found torn to pieces all over Kanagawa Prefecture, to say nothing of the supposed bombing at the summer carnival that this boy and her own daughter had attended. The sadistic monster had apparently begun its spree by killing five innocent little orphans.

"Which is why we're talking to you, ma'am. The boy's survival makes us wonder."

"Why? A small miracle among several tragedies? Why should that make you wonder?"

The police detective shook his head.

"Kaze No Kaede does not leave survivors—ever. Well, no survivors that walk on two legs. Your nephew is the first case in which our unknown maniac relented. We even thought he might be our killer, but the ESPer tests were negative."

"How idiotic of you, to suspect a little boy. And what are ESPer tests?"

"We narrow our list of suspects by first suspecting everybody. As for the ESPer tests? They are now standard for determining if a suspect possesses powers and abilities above and beyond the Human norm. Should we ever be lucky enough to take Kaze No Kaede in alive, we suspect his high ESPer rating could be the reason he is able to kill so cleanly-pardon my use of the term."

"That's tabloid nonsense."

"Ma'am, we have a pickpocket who, if able to concentrate, can pull what some would call 'the old Jedi Mind Trick' in order to get released. We have one woman banned from casinos for the minor talent to mentally flip items as small as a coin—or a pair of dice. Yet these folks are like monitor lizards compared to the veritable Gojira that Kaze No Kaede must be, if our theory is correct."

Annoyed that they would even allow such insanity to enter the discussion of her family's murder, Emiko offered no more help and was soon dismissed. She peeked in on her nephew, who had finally been sedated. A voice came from behind her.

"Is he all right?"

Emiko turned and saw a girl nearly her daughter's age, but with the oddest shade of hair, the top of it covered by a wool cap. Why would her mother let her bleach it like that? A disgrace.

"No. He's badly traumatized by what he saw. Do you know my nephew?"

"He is my very dear friend. I would be sad if he ever came to harm."

Something in Emiko she could not define almost screamed at her to not challenge this child in any way, shape, or form, nor to say anything that could remotely be perceived as a challenge. Looking back on that night ten years later, Emiko stopped dismissing the psychic realm as the stuff of tabloids.

"Please forgive my asking you questions. I'm just concerned for my nephew."

Emiko noted that the backing away on her part seemed to calm the girl considerably.

"Of course you are. He's of your kind-I mean your family."

Emiko raced through her options, and found one that helped her to get away from this very creepy child.

"Uhhh—the police are asking questions about what happened. But the questions they're asking are foolish. Psychic powers, and all that? They suspect everyone, they say. They even suspected him, for a time."

The girl gained the only definable look she would hold in front of Emiko - that of concern and confusion.

"But he didn't do it!"

"Of course he didn't. But maybe since they're being so foolish, you should leave before they bother you too."

"Thank You. The police don't scare me, but I do want to be away from here. So long as he is alive, there is hope, isn't there?"

"Yes, of course. I hope my daughter sees it that way. Not seeing him for a long while may be more than she can bear."

The coldness returned, this time in greater force.

"Your daughter yells at him, and clings onto him like an octopus."

Emiko actually laughed lightly.

"That's her. Say, do you live around-"

The child was gone, bringing up thoughts of old stories and beings who came and went as they pleased, sometimes taking the unwary living back with them. Emiko was never happier to see such a thing. Other grim tasks awaited her on this very long day.

"But he'll be coming back next summer. He promised!"

"No, honey. He won't. When I saw him, he didn't even recognize me."

Certain concepts were beyond a child.

"So only Uncle and Kanae will come to visit? Oh, she's so hateful!"

"Darling-"

"Well, she is! I wish someone would tie her to a railroad track, just like in those old cartoons!"

Emiko grabbed her wrist. Her daughter did not deserve to be struck.

"Yuka, you may one day see Kouta again. But Uncle and Kanae are never coming back. We must call for the family members, and prepare for their funerals. They were killed aboard the train that was supposed to take them home, and Kouta saw this happen. That's why he's in such bad shape."

"Was there an accident? Did the train crash?"

"I—I cannot tell you what happened. You would get nightmares from it. But there was no accident. Someone came aboard the train and did this to them."

"Why? Mother, why would they do such a thing?"

Emiko held her little girl, who sometimes shook with fury.

"He'll remember me! He has to remember me—He better remember me. You'll see—he'll come back and then he'll make me his wife."

A martial arts regimen over the following months seemed to direct Yuka's physical energy, even if her near-obsession with her crush seemed never to diminish. Emiko for her part had nightmares of kissing her brother-in-law, only to find he was nothing but a cold head. The relatives and neighbors clucked as they always would, and oddly enough, the Kaze No Kaede killings stopped entirely. Emiko would do her best over the coming eight years to help Yuka through the pain of losing someone who wasn't truly dead.

On one positive note, the murders at the orphanage brought about the replacement of the staff personnel, who were cited for allowing the children to act without restraint or guidance, falling into gang-like behavior or even behavior reminiscent of wolf-packs. Eventually, the place where a creepy young girl learned to hate Humanity was closed entirely. Emiko kept this and other articles related to Kaze No Kaede in a scrap-book she gave to Yuka before she left for college.

Glimpsing it during a later clean-up, a young woman who had once been a creepy child still hoped that the kids in the orphanage did better after this, even if they weren't really 'people'.

_1 _

_MARCH, 2002_

In a dark grim facility on an island no longer officially recorded as being off of Kamakura, Japan, a girl who had never done anyone harm prayed hard that today would not be the day the Glasses Man came to visit.

A scientist who often wondered why he hadn't taken the internship at Umbrella told his topmost superior that the remains of a Human woman could no longer yield viable reproductive material. This scientist was terminated, and then guided out through an underground passageway, where he met girls who had no faces, and learned how his life might have gone if he had taken that other internship.

The second-in-command was never informed that the son of their topmost superior paid a visit and just as suddenly left, having laid the groundwork for an excursion by a young woman who had definitely done many a great deal of harm. The irony is, the second almost spotted his former friend, but his secretary fell over while carrying some designs for a Christmas dress, a present for a young girl who was soon turning seven. She would wear it exactly once.

A young girl called a woman she had never met _"Mama" _and waited for her to insert once more how her birth-parents had never wanted her. She was saying this more and more often nowadays, and the girl inside the chamber, the daughter of the second-in-command, wondered if the woman she called Mama really thought she was that stupid. She never doubted that her parents had rejected her (not entirely the truth) but she really hated that "Mama" thought that little of her.

There was also a young girl in a highest-security containment chamber who was very nearly the reason the facility had been built. She was the daughter of the dead woman who had been dissected for her eggs. She was the Messiah of the top-most superior and his son, both of whom would one day make her offers she would find it easy to refuse. She was the arch-nemesis of the second-in-command, and the reason why the young girl who rolled her eyes at "Mama's" repetitive mantra was in the facility to start with. She would also one day kill that same girl. She would kill the woman who fell over. She would try her damndest to kill the girl who was turning seven, and she would make a bloody ruin of her and her new dress. There was only one other in the world really like her, and he ironically lived on the same island and had the same mother as her. Within minutes of meeting this boy, she would kill him as well.

Of course, the scariest fact about her, surpassing her threat to Human supremacy and her place as a pawn in a madman's apocalyptic scheme was the fact that she was a teenage girl in love with a boy who was likely in love with her as well, till one day they suffered a minor misunderstanding, which resulted in the death of the boy's family and a mental breakdown on his part. Teenage romance can be that way—particularly when entangled with the evolutionary destiny of the planet. That never helps. In fact, when the time came when that son of the topmost superior enabled her escape, she would take that risk not for her newly emergent species, but just to see that boy one last time and apologize for making an utter ruin of his life because he tried not to hurt her feelings and failed. Again teenage romance just tends this way.

The night after she and the boy had their-tiff-the regretful (not so much if you asked several thousand people at minimum) girl met a woman, and she was this boy's aunt, whose widowed in-law and lover the girl had decapitated the night prior, giving him just enough time to see the daughter this woman's sister, his late wife, had in essence given her life to have, lying on the floor of the train compartment, looking very much as though the train wheels had ridden over her midsection. This woman's daughter had in some respects caused this grim sequence of events, although evidence for this culpability may rest more with an orgy of abuse and isolation suffered by the girl in the highest-security containment chamber. The woman, the aunt, spoke briefly to the girl, as said a little on the touchy side, and then did not see her again for almost ten years. But she would remember that little girl, and her odd feeling that somehow, the girl was not Human.

Likely, you know that part of it.

_2_

Away from the grim island but still touched by it in ways she would only understand much later, the woman, the aunt, took a phone call from someone gone just as long as that girl, and who in fact had been gone because of that same girl. The woman, Emiko, felt her eyes go wide. In the voice she heard traces of both her dead lover and her own dead sister, gender aside. Sadly absent were the bold tones of the young explorer who, upon getting off the train from Hokkaido, loudly proclaimed his intent to uncover the greatest secret in all of Kanto. In the present, he had no idea that he had done just that.

"Auntie? Is that you? I'm sorry, this is the number they gave me for Emiko Shi-"

She snapped out of her reverie, the bad and the good of it.

"Yes. Yes, Kouta-San. It's me. It's your Emikoba."

The joy in her voice would prove to be largely one-sided.

"Is that—is that what I used to call you? Sounds like something a little kid would say."

Emiko admonished herself for forgetting how much he had forgotten.

"Well, you were pretty young then. But it was always sweet, so I never minded. How are you?"

She wanted to reach through the line and grab him, hug him, hold him and smother with kisses a face that contained the ones she once loved best of all. But a simple question, the doctors had told her, was all his psyche could take, even so long after it had rebuilt itself around the sanity-healing lies he created.

"Auntie, didn't I used to be smart?"

She knew other things she couldn't talk about as well. At times, her life seemed to be made up of them.

"I'm sure you're just as smart as ever, Kouta-San. Why would you say such a thing?"

Again, his voice lacked not merely the cocksure certainty of a little boy, but also that which a young man tended to have as his birth-right.

"Auntie, I've failed the entry exams for universities up and down the coast. I knew I couldn't really think about anything on the Todai level, but even the mid and low-level schools have proven too much for me. I studied and studied, but nothing came of it. My father would be disappointed, wouldn't he?"

"No, he would not! Listen young man, your father and Kanae didn't want to…to leave you like they did. If you could speak to them, they would admire your strength in living. Now, did you call me just for me to tell you what you already knew?"

There seemed to be a bit of happiness in his voice as he responded.

"No. I called because I'll be coming to your town. I decided to give up trying, and accept going to a safety school. I—sort of-remember Kamakura being a nice place, and Kanae always liked it-before she got sick. Auntie—were you in the hospital room with us when she died?"

That bad night came back. The night when she identified two bodies, one of those a little girl cleaved in two the way nothing short of a katana could do. Kanae was never taken to a hospital, except by way of its basement.

"I don't-don't remember, Kouta-San. That was a sad time."

Kouta's voice gained its hesitancy again.

"I said something to her before she died. I think maybe it was something hateful. She was crying, and scared."

Of that, Emiko had no doubt. The unknown serial killer, called Kaze No Kaede by the press, must have been a giant to pull off the feats he did, even if he somehow had Muramasa's personal blade with him.

"Oh—wait. I recall now. Kouta-San, I was not in the room with you. But your father told me what happened. You two were playfully teasing each other, and she laughed so hard she cried—asked you to stop making her laugh. After that-it—it was just her time."

It was a Santa Claus-level lie, and Emiko didn't care. She wanted to raise up her nephew's shattered spirit. She hoped one day he would stand above Kaze no Kaede with a gun, the monster shaking as death came for it at last.

"Thanks, Auntie. I mean that. I hope I can see you and—and—I have a cousin, right? Is my cousin a boy or a girl?"

His voice seemed on the verge of cracking for some reason. She reasoned it was embarrassment from not remembering.

"Your cousin is a girl, my daughter, Yuka. She'll be very happy to see you again, Kouta-San."

Not a lie, but a massive understatement. Even so, that happy reunion might not go as her child planned.

"Were Yuka-Chan and I friends, when we were children? I think we were, but it's like you said, those were sad times."

Emiko decided she plainly couldn't take much more.

"You were very friendly with each other, Kouta-San. Will you need a place to stay, while going to University?"

"Yeah. But—I haven't figured that part out yet."

Emiko assured him that she would take care of that for him, and excused herself from the phone. She lay down for an hour, fighting back a flood of emotions, hoping to have them in check before Yuka came home.

"Mama? Kouta-San's coming back at last?!"

There was not merely electricity in her voice. No, the little girl head over heels in love at age ten was now a young woman also head over heels. Like she had never left.

"I've decided to let Kouta-San stay at one of the properties your great-grandmother left to me, under a maintenance agreement. With his finances plus the need for study, there's no way he can handle a rental agreement, and some of these local landlords are vampires. God help him if he should end up in a winter rental, lose his organs, and get turned out when summer comes anyway."

Yuka was trembling. All her patient Manga heroines stood behind her, congratulating her on the virtues of patience rewarded. They would have to congratulate her once again, for her time of patience was hardly done with.

"But Mother? What school will he be going to? The only school in the area is a safety school. The Kouta-San I know would never even contemplate _that_."

Emiko tried to fight back a sigh. There were so many of life's disappointments she was just unprepared for.

"That is where he is going, Yuka-chan. He was disappointed as well, but those are the cards we're dealt."

Emiko turned away, so as not see the pain on Yuka's face.

"But—but now, we won't go to school together! He may as well be living in another town again."

Emiko failed to fight off the sigh this time.

"Well, unless you sign up to his safety school, I don't see how you can change that, child. And with your grades, that's not going to happen. Yuka, you must accept…"

She looked back, and her daughter was gone.

"Yuka?"

Needless to say, Yuka did the unthinkable for someone with her prospects and signed up for the local university.

Emiko knew her nephew would soon once more have a girlfriend, whether he wanted her or not. But back on that same island, two months separated them all from the birth of his harem. For a man named Kurama had just decided to transfer his most dangerous prisoner to an even more secure containment chamber.

For the record, the prisoner called Lucy would enact her own transfer, authorized in red, just not in ink.

_3_

_SEPTEMBER, 2002_

For days, Emiko had put up with the frenzied comings and goings of her daughter. But merely an hour before, Yuka had entered quietly, gone to her room quietly, and quietly she remained there. Gone were her hurried pronouncements about absolutely everything Kouta was doing or had done, and how very helpless he was.

Added to something else in her blather that seemed off, it was enough for Emiko to finally decide to sit her down and get some answers. But as she entered her daughter's room, she was already sat down, and the soundtrack from her favorite movie musical played on the small turntable she treasured, a last Christmas gift from the father she barely remembered.

"_Guess Mine Is Not The First Heart Broken; My Eyes Are Not The First To Cry; I'm Not The First To Know; There's Just No Getting Over You; I'm Hopelessly Devoted To You…"_

On the desk in front of Yuka were numerous carving games, some highly intricate. Though Yuka had gotten quite good at these, these ones were broken and cut through. Emiko knew full well why she had become so good at them, and she had a fair idea as to why she would deliberately break them.

"Yuka-Chan…"

Emiko frowned as the rising music overrode her words.

"…_there's nowhere to hide, since you pushed my love aside, I'm out of my head; Hopelessly Devoted To You; Hopelessly Devoted To Y…"_

Emiko hoped her own teenaged self would forgive scratching Olivia Newton-John, but there was no choice, so she abruptly lifted the needle. Yuka's response was far too muted.

"I was listening to that."

Her speaking voice was so far drained, Emiko was reminded of Yuka's Kohai, the polite but painfully shy Nozomi-chan. This also was not a good sign, so Emiko, always the more blunt of the two sisters and aunts, said it straight.

"Maybe it's time to let him go, Yuka-chan. He's not Danny Zuko, and for that matter, neither is John Travolta."

_*No*_, thought Emiko dreamily. _*John Travolta is forever and always Tony Manero and no other.*_ before the dance floor vanished, and the present reasserted itself again over the late 1970's.

A rise of temper gave Yuka's mother some hope as the girl came back to life.

"How can you say that? What do you know about letting anything go?"

Emiko would one day teach this same boy, when he was her son-in-law, the best methods of dealing with the temper Yuka had inherited from her father. Most involved upping their calm to match the rage, which she used then and there.

"Oh—let's see. I've buried my parents, my grandparents, your father, his parents, his grandparents, my sister, her husband, their daughter, and arranged to have their son the young man you're killing yourself over committed to long-term mental health rehab. I've also managed the financial affairs of all those people. So, my darling girl? Please ask me again what I know about letting go."

Yuka wiped her eyes, and looked ashamed.

"Mama, I'm sorry. I meant no disrespect."

Emiko held her close, then pushed back and looked her in the eye.

"Respect you have, Yuka. Perspective, you lack very badly."

Still sniffling, Yuka sat back down.

"So give me perspective then."

Pulling up an extra chair meant for study partners, Emiko stroked her girl's hair.

"I told you about his memory problems."

"NO! It's just him being dense and a little cruel, ya know-just like he used to be."

It would take a horrid disconnect on Kouta's part to make a believer of Yuka, but that would come soon. For then and there, Emiko kept on her larger point.

"You've spent most of the last eight years preparing for a return you had no guarantee of. You've squandered entry into at least a few very good schools. You turned away at least three really nice boys I know of saving yourself for a young man who, and let's be honest here, for all intents and purposes, died that sad night along with Kanae and your Uncle."

Yuka did not resent, yet could also not bear to look at her mother.

"You're wrong. I'll prove you're wrong about Kouta-San. He's just being a jerk, and once he stops, I'll forgive him for it. Because there is no way he could ever forget me."

Emiko rose from the blunt to the harsh, remembering that sometimes, cruelty is kindness.

"He has forgotten you, Yuka-chan. To keep what's left of his mind from being consumed by grief, he has drawn a black mark around you and all that you two were together. Look at him now. Still a nice guy, but willing to settle for a safety school? Would the Kouta you knew have ever allowed anything to stop him from at least trying for Todai?"

For the moment, Yuka offered no spoken rebuttal, though her mother knew this was likely not a surrender to reality, just a retreat to a safe if silently held position. So Emiko kept on, but at a more stealthy remove.

"Just what happened to put you in this state?"

Yuka had many positive traits. Definitely not among them, though, was her proclivity to jump far ahead of the person she was talking to.

"I caught Kouta stripping Nyu."

Emiko asked what she thought any sane person might.

"What is a Nyu?"

Yuka sat bolt upright.

"Oh, that's right."

She smiled a stupidly infuriating smile that one day every single member of her extended family would tell her to stop using, for it was just that annoying.

"Sorry, Mama. This past week has been so crazy. There's so much I haven't told you."

About an hour later, Emiko had a new appreciation for the wisdom that states ignorance is bliss.

"You-you found a naked girl on the beach. With a head wound. Instead of alerting authorities immediately, you took her to the Kaede-Sou, where she proved either so infantile or so drunk, she peed on the floor. She ran off after Kouta lost his temper, you two went to recover her-I hope she had clothes by this point-you were ATTACKED by unknowns who the police want you to ignore-and, rather than contacting me or asking around about her family, you left a young man who's lived much of his life in isolation with custody of a young girl. Wait-a little girl? No figure yet, incessantly calls Kouta Onii-Chan? Please tell me she's like that."

Yuka seemed almost cross.

"Mother, when you say it all like that, it sounds like some story with a lot of plotholes and stupid assumptions made by gullible characters."

"Remember, kid-you said it-I didn't."

Yuka drew back, but only a bit.

"Nyu-is-a-little hottie. She has a very nice body, looks to be between fifteen and sixteen-and has hair that-tends reddish. Her name is about the only word she can form. She is very devoted to Kouta-San."

Emiko fought back endless snarky comments, the worst of which was :

_*Well, dear, I know you haven't been able to give Kouta any birthday or Christmas gifts all these years, but this may be taking it a bit too far. Tell me, did you get Nyu a cheerleader's outfit for the occasion as well?*_

Instead, she kept her comments to the practical.

"Is there anything else about her you're not telling me?"

Yuka valued honesty. Yuka valued truth.

"nothing of any real importance."

Yuka lied through her teeth, leaving a hole where the lie passed. Then, she did something that her mother found less infuriating than utterly confusing.

"Oh, how silly of me."

Yuka began gathering some of her things. Emiko shook her head.

"Where are you going?"

Yuka smiled a smile a great deal surer than any look she had worn for awhile.

"You're absolutely right, Mama. I have been silly. Nyu-chan is too much of a handful-hmmph! two nice soft handfuls-for Kouta-san to handle. So I'm moving in with them, to keep an eye on them both."

Emiko had always thought that the day her baby left home would be somewhat more dramatic.

"What brought this on? I thought you were mainly concerned about Kouta."

Yuka packed light, but was being thorough in this.

"Well, he is a pervert. But I now realize, Nyu's clothes were soaking wet from the rain, and his eyes were closed as he pulled her pants off. He was making an effort, stupid though it was. It's unfair of me to leave him right in the lap of temptation without the hands of correction to steer him clear."

Emiko cornered her child on one subject.

"So-if you're living there, will you split the maintenance chores with your cousin?"

Emiko noted that Yuka never met her eyes as she responded.

"We'll work all that out, Mother. Well, I better get over there before they end up making a Nyu Junior. Oh, I will so kill him if that happens!"

The cab came, and though she would be back for her things, Emiko knew her nest was now empty. She realized she could even start dating again in a real way. But for then and there, she picked up a picture of her late sister with her husband, and simply shook her head.

"Should've listened to you, Imouto. We should have run off and joined a nunnery."

Where, she had to admit, they would not have lasted very long. About three hours into a headache-born nap, she received a phone call.

"Yuka-chan? Oh-well will he be all right? Thank goodness. Oh? Well, obviously that's not how he died. I tried to warn you-even so, I didn't know he rearranged past history in his head, but I guess that makes sense. Well, until he gets over it, you'll be solely responsible for maintenance-no, we're not breaking up-Yuka, we're on a landline. Don't you dare try and dump all that work on poor-"

Emiko heard an odd noise in the background on the phone, from Yuka's end. She chose to ignore it.

"Well, listen. If she is going to be staying and living on my property, then I want to meet this Nyu. No, that is not up for discussion. You were keeping something from me about her, and in any event, I want to..."

Emiko heard the odd noise again.

"Yuka, did you two buy a cat?"


	2. Chapter 2

_4_

Of course, by the time Emiko first met Nyu, she had wheedled out of her daughter what she had been reluctant to tell her.

"Mother-this is Nyu. Nyu-this is my Mama, Emiko-Sama."

As the confused girl had her jester-like cap pulled off, Emiko saw them. The pink hair, completely naturally so, was quite enough to throw her off. But what was growing through her hair had Emiko's full attention.

"Nyu?"

Depending on the way her hair fell around them, they looked like anything from sea-shells to a pair of cat ears, one protruding from each temple. But the best word to describe them was the one Yuka had used.

"My God, she really has horns."

Yuka looked briefly concerned.

"Mama, are you sure you want to do this?"

Emiko was actually uncertain of several things. But this meeting was not one of them.

"You and Kouta found out the hard way you can't leave her at home alone."

Yuka winced.

"Not unless we turn off the gas, electricity and water before we leave in the morning. Not to mention putting newspapers down."

Emiko nodded while Nyu's eyes darted around her home, an intense look of wonder pasted on the horned girl's face.

"Maybe while she's here, we can figure out who she is and where she comes from."

As Nyu's hands brushed against a wind chime, she stood in open-mouthed awe as the chimes began their song. As Yuka left, she reminded her mother of earlier words.

"No police?"

"No, Baka, no police. I never trusted the local force, anyway. They're in the pocket of some people-well, some people your great-grandmother never cared for. Plus, given what Kouta said, they seem to have lost their minds. And they never did catch your Uncle and Kanae's killer, did they?"

Yuka muttered a name.

"The Wind From The Maples - Kaze No Kaede."

Nyu's head turned at this, and she realized Yuka was leaving.

"Nyu! NYU!"

Nyu ran up and bear-hugged a girl that even her hidden half would one day admit _'simply grew on you'_.

"Now, now. Mama will care for you today. Kouta and I will pick you up after school, alright?"

Nyu calmed down as Yuka walked away, and looked at Emiko as she closed the door, whispering under her breath the first word she would ever speak besides her own name. That word was a charged one for all portions of her being.

"Mama?"

"Alright now, Nyu. Want to watch some TV?"

Nyu seemed not only confused, but utterly blank on the word. Emiko realized that, with all that had happened plus starting classes, likely Yuka's TV was not even unpacked yet.

"Alright. We'll start with some morning cartoon reruns. They probably won't overload you."

A new, recently ended remake of 'Astro Boy' appeared onscreen, and at first Nyu was deadly frightened. But as the compelling imagery and action drew her in, she calmed down, and as Emiko made an egg dish for their breakfast, she saw Nyu point her arms as though to aim, only to be disappointed when nothing happened.

"Nyu?"

Emiko had to chuckle at this, despite some serious concerns, including the ulterior motive for this visit.

"Baka! Nyu-people's arms don't fly off like rockets and then re-attach like nothing happened."

At least, not yet. That was a few months away. But then, a non-action scene hit Nyu-and another inside her-harder than anything had since a young sociopath lifted a rock in the old orphanage. Onscreen, the troubled scientist who had made the heroic robot boy vented some ugly words towards his creation.

_****I wish you had disappeared during that battle. Because I don't care what happens to you. I reject you. You are not my son, you never were. I can even speak this way to you without regret, because it is not the same as doing it to a real human being. When I first built you in my insane grief over Toby, when your ignition circuits destabilized, I should have just left you in a field to explode. You are the devil, and I reject you, and I reject the sin that caused me to make you.****_

Emiko heard the brutal tirade as well, briefly recalling that, in the version she grew up with, Doctor Tenma could be cold, but never harsh like this. But this train of thought vanished as Nyu began to wail openly and cry her eyes out.

"Hey! What's this? Don't cry. He's a jerk right now, but eventually, when Astro really does disappear, he goes searching for him, and never stops looking, even when the bad guys capture him and force him to build another-"

Emiko would later realize she was mixing up her history - she hadn't watched any series since _Maison Ikkoku_ ended. But Nyu's tears became her main concern. Unable to hold back, she grabbed Nyu and held her close.

"There, there, baby. I may not be your Mama, but let me make it all better."

Nyu accepted the warm embrace, and felt Emiko hold one side of her head to wipe away the tears. The tender gesture caused Nyu to imitate it, which took Emiko completely by surprise.

"Nyu, don't!"

But now both of Nyu's hands dug through Emiko's thick hair, until they reached a spot near her temples on either side. Emiko froze as she recalled her late grandmother's words of warning.

_1965_

_"Protect yourself and your little sister, Emi-Chan. I escaped that world of madness and blasphemous belief in phony legends because I was born without them. But if they ever learn you two have them, then either they will indoctrinate you into that cult we called a family, or people on the outside will treat you like they did our ancestors. Did you know they took little girls and cut them in two, so no new 'demons' would grow inside them? Do you want to see your little sister cut in two? No. Then always hide your horns, Emiko. And pray you never see anyone else with them, because then men like my insane nephew Hideki will have found their messiah, and Humans will be done for."_

The Present

The woman born as Aimi Kakuzawa was actually quite gentle and loving, and even apologized for what she saw as the need to scare the truth into her granddaughter. But in her view, Kamakura and perhaps even Kanto was a fiefdom of the family that had turned her out, albeit with a dowry of properties that included a then-successful restaurant and inn named for the local Red Maple trees. Their eyes were everywhere, Emi had been told, always looking for the birth of horned children not of their own clan. They were ever alert for the birth of the 'pure demon' who would be their messiah and the overturning of corrupt and stupid Humanity.

For her part, Nyu continued to rub at what she found, till Emiko grabbed each of her wrists and gently pushed them away.

"Nyu, I asked you to stop that!"

Emiko feared that perhaps she had been too harsh, as a stunned look fell over Nyu's face.

"Please don't cry. I just don't like being touched..."

But Nyu did not cry. Instead, she again spoke a word other than her name, which she was weeks away from doing for Kouta and Nyu. It was the same word she had whispered earlier.

"Mama?"

Nyu was pointing towards Emiko's hair, and what she had felt just beneath it.

"Mama?"

Emiko rose, and saw the longing in Nyu's eyes. The longing of a child rejected, and wanting to know why. In fact, the girl's mother had not had horns, nor had she rejected her as she was told by cruel workers at the Children's Welfare Center. But the longing of almost all of Nyu's being to have that lost love was too intense to even consider logic, even if Nyu at this time had been capable of it.

"You can call me Mama, if you want, baby."

Emiko saw the girl smile, and took it to be the genuine smile it was. Even with deep suspicions, it was not in Emiko to tell this poor motherless creature anything else. Emiko came back from the stove and put out two plates. Hers had egg and haddock with a little kipper, while Nyu's plate had a scrambled egg (Emiko decided against a poached one with Nyu for yolk issues) and some sliced turkey. Nyu took down both quickly, and burped with a huge grin.

"NYUUUU!"

Another TV channel had a program of light classical music, and Emiko seated Nyu to watch and listen. At first, Nyu moved her hand in joyful imitation of the conductor's baton, but she began to yawn, and as the gentle movements of the music kept on, Emiko put a pillow behind Nyu's head and a blanket over her. Before too long, she was, as is said, out like a light. Emiko fetched an item she had bought specially for Nyu.

"Sorry, kid. But I have to know."

Emiko was glad she had decided to use turkey, which contained natural relaxants like tryptophan, as opposed to some kind of knockout pills. In fact, her choice in this matter had been among the wisest she had ever made on any matter at any time in her life.

Opening the shopping bag, Emi produced an adult-sized snow cap, very similar to one she had given Kouta as a Christmas present, when Yuka and her sister's children had first met. A cap she had reason to believe her nephew had given away. Stretching it, she placed it on Nyu's head, covering her horns and showing off only part of her hair. But for Emi, this was enough.

"It's you, isn't it?"

Older, to be sure, but it was now certain : Nyu had been the odd little girl Emiko had met the night Kouta's father and Kanae were murdered. She had shown up at the hospital, inquiring about Kouta, wearing his cap, and with that pink hair, just before vanishing entirely. That girl's look had been as dour as Nyu's was gentle, but asleep, there was no denying it.

"But what does it all mean?"

She felt a bit lost, and looked over at a beach picture of Yuka, Kouta and Kanae during that long summer that flowed like water when it started, and ended in waves of blood. She smiled when she recalled making sure the kids had absolutely everything they needed for the day, even giving them extra spending money, with which Kouta bought a music box he played exactly once. She probably still had it in storage somewhere. Of course, this level of prep on alternate afternoons had a payoff-alone time for two widowed adults who had always been friends and then at last became something more, poking their heads out the window and keeping an ear out like horny teens attempting their first time-except the ear was for their kids, not their own parents.

But there had been dark times, too, like right after Kanae had been born.

_HOKKAIDO, 1987_

_"Thank you for coming, Ma'am. I know this is a hard time for your family."_

_"My sister knew the risks of this pregnancy, Doctor. It's my brother-in-law I worry about. As for my husband-he was warned about falling asleep at the wheel. I think I'm too angry to grieve. Will we also have to grieve Little Kanae?"_

_"I don't see that. The odd protrusions some members of your family have are nothing more than a minor genetic mutation-it may as well be freckles, for all the impact it has on your lives."_

_Emiko only wished that were true._

_"But Kanae has no ho-protrusions?"_

_The doctor shook his head._

_"The only thing we noticed is an oddity with her vision. It's very good, albeit as unfocused as an infant's usually is. However, she seems to react to energy wavelengths most can't see. Nothing to be worried about. But if she ever claims to see anything that no one else can, short of a mental psychosis, it's probably some form of ability that Humans once had or might develop one day."_

_Seeing that his words were no comfort to Emiko, the doctor added a piece of indirect good news._

_"I think little Kanae will be in good hands. Her brother is a hell of a kid."_

_Emi wondered about the tangent, but welcomed it._

_"Thank You. But what brought this on?"_

_The Doctor smiled._

_"We sometimes ask children who have lost a loved one to walk with us in the Burns section of the Children's Care Center. It gives them perspective on what loss really means. They come to see these horribly wounded kids as people, not freaks. But young Kouta? Right from the start, he talked to them all like he would any other kid, and they loved him for it. Even some of the grimmest cases lit up when he chatted with them. Ma'am, I don't know about horns and the possibility of spectral vision, but that kind of compassion and empathy is a real-life superpower. A lot more of it could even save this sorry world we live in."_

_"Well-he takes after his Mom. Whether he shows it or not, he misses her terribly. Acts like he'll find her alive over the next hill someday, or if he waits long enough. He liked-he liked running his fingers through his Mama's hair...and so did I."_

THE PRESENT

As Nyu suddenly snored loudly, Emi snapped back to her train of thought.

_* All right-she knew Kouta-Kun even back then. Both of them return to town at the same time, and now both are amnesiac, in her case possibly even mentally ill. Well, it's obvious, isn't it? I mean, the answer's right there in front of me, though I don't dare tell Kouta or Yuka. He could never handle this truth, and my child, bless her, is a huge blabbermouth. But there is no other reasonable conclusion, is there?*_

Emiko found the common thread she was looking for, but mistook the pattern it took to really see the whole tapestry.

_*The answer is that simple. As a child, Nyu was aboard that train bound for Hokkaido - and she - she saw __Juniuchi and Kanae get murdered. She may even know who Kaze No Kaede is, but was so traumatized that she eventually retreated to this infantile state. Who knows? Maybe the murderer held her captive for eight years, and she only just escaped when they found her on the beach. Or maybe I'm missing something else? No-what other answer could there be?*_

It was a reasonable theory, and almost on the money in so many respects. In fact, it was so close, Emi would curse herself when the full truth came to light. But she would curse the girl she let call her Mama even harder.

"nyuuuuuu...nyuuuuu."

Seeing the puddle, Emiko grabbed a mop and shuffled Nyu off for a pee and a bath-and then another bath when that one became tainted.

"Don't worry, Nyu. That's why my couch is covered in plastic."

Emi took the opportunity of the baths to confirm the true color of Nyu's hair, just in case her theory was wrong. After an effort at potty training and some more TV, Emiko let Nyu sleep again, and worked on managing the properties left to her family by her late grandmother. One of the income-producing rentals paid for Kouta's tuition and school expenses, at least in part. By the time she had sent out the last of the various bills and correspondence for these properties, she came to another realization about Nyu, this one far more mundane. When Yuka and Kouta returned, she gave some bad news.

"But Mother? What will we do?"

Emiko shrugged.

"I have too much maintenance work to do on my various properties..."

Yuka turned away from her mother and glared at Kouta.

"Hear that? My mother does it for several properties and doesn't complain!"

As Yuka was about to say something else, Emiko pulled her close and whispered.

"Dear? You're being a little bitch. If you don't stop riding him, I will rat you out on the work at Maple House without remorse. How will Kouta-Kun react when he learns you lied about how much work he really has to do?"

Yuka gulped. Her high ground had definitely leveled out.

"Sorry, Mother. I won't be rude and interrupt you again."

_*She's a little too good at that*_, thought Emiko.

"Anyway, I have work that I have to do and contractors I have to oversee. I've enjoyed having Nyu here, but my schedule is a lot fuller than I thought. What will you do, Kouta-Kun?"

Kouta had already shrugged off Yuka's words.

"Some of our classes can be skipped, at least once or twice, but I guess-pretty soon Nyu will be coming to school with us. Speaking of our horned devil..."

Nyu came bounding up, hugging Kouta and then Yuka, and then Kouta, Emiko, and Kouta at least three more times, till someone's patience was used up.

"Oh, stop it already!"

"Hey! She's hugging me!"

"And don't you love it?!"

Kouta calmed Nyu, gently pushed her back, and then noticed something.

"Hey, Auntie? This cap you gave her? It looks just like the one you gave me for Christmas, all those years ago."

Yuka's turned towards him slowly.

"A cap? You-you remember-a cap?"

Kouta nodded.

"It was a really nice cap. Why? Shouldn't I remember it?"

Yuka was muttering some language as she left that prompted Nyu to cover her ears. Kouta shook his head.

"Emikoba-Sama? Can you teach me how to talk to women?"

She pulled her sister's baby close.

"Of course I will. But understand - none of my lessons will help you with Yuka. Even I still don't know how to talk to her."

He kissed her on the cheek, and to their surprise, Nyu did the same. She also pointed at Emiko's head as Kouta guided her out. They exchanged smiles as well. When the young people under her charge were gone, Emi spoke out loud before starting dinner.

"Hide your horns, child. Hide your horns."

Emi had in fact considered whether Nyu was another member of her grandmother's family, but realized there was no way someone with horns like hers would be turned out. Emi and her sister only had slight ones, Kouta and Yuka none, and Kanae's were present but mostly internal, the pressure on her optic nerve causing the possible 'extra' vision the Doctor had mentioned. Emi tried to recall Kanae ever saying anything about such sightings, but she could not.

*Hell, if Gran-Gran's crazy nephew saw Nyu, he might even think she was their Messi...*

Emi pushed out the very dangerous thought and spent the evening doing the happy joyful work of arguing with contractors over the phone.

She threw herself into her work so hard, that, two weeks later, her near-term schedule was clear. Wanting to help, she called up her daughter, thinking to offer to take Nyu in another day or two.

"Hello? Who is this? Well, may I speak to Kouta-Kun or Yuka-Chan?-yes, tell Nyu I said Hello as well. Yuka? What's going on? Who is that-another one? She has nowhere to go, no family to-she did what? What kind of mother signs over their child to complete strangers? You agreed not to ask those kinds of-yes, I want to meet her. Because-she's living on my property, going to a local school as my family's charge, and frankly, Yuka-chan, I think that you two may have fallen for the line of a con artist. This Sunday would be great. Describe her? No-no Yuka, Kawaii is a term for otakus, not one used to describe real people. No, Moe isn't a real term either-except for a stooge, which I think this character and her mother have taken you and Kouta-Kun for. Alright-I'll expect you, Nyu, this new girl and Kouta at that time."

Before she hung up, Emi heard one more request from Yuka.

"Bring her friend too? More like bring her accomplice. Alright, alright. Oh? I'm as bad as Kouta? Maybe one day, neither Kouta-Kun nor myself will put up with your tantrums...you dropped the phone...don't you dare run off, you crybaby...who's this? I can't make you out..there's some static over the line, sounds like a dog barking...Kouta? Who was that-yes, go get Yuka back, but who was that just now?"

Kouta was forced to put the receiver down as he chased down Yuka. Emiko heard one word, a name.

"Wanda? I thought her name was Myu. Heh-Myu and Nyu. Not a coincidence...Nyu-chan? Honey, put the phone down-please put it down-"

Emi heard a sound she didn't like at all.

"Nyu? Just-where did you put the receiver in? Because I don't think it's supposed to be in there."

The days passed, and a new phone was ordered for Maple House, an extra-heavy model the installer said could knock a man out cold, and would not easily serve any unintended purposes. A makeshift family made its way to Emiko's house. She warmly greeted her nephew, warily greeted her daughter, laughed at a beaming Nyu in a jester's hat, and then saw the one she had asked to see.

"Ma'am? Thank you for having me in your home. It's very lovely. I hope I can continue to stay at Maple House-but I don't want to be a freeloader, or a burden."

She was the cutest thing Emi had ever seen. Forget Moe and Kawaii. Mangaka could use her as a template for the likes of Shinobu, Sasami and Chika. She was also humble and polite as all get-out. Emiko knew then for certain.

_*No way she is not a con artist running a scam. The only thing missing from her 'little hard-luck runaway' set-up is a small dog, even cuter than her.*_

Mayu held something up.

"Oh, and this is my friend, Wanta. I thought maybe he had gone away forever, but the same night of my birthday party, when I moved in, he showed up, scratching at the door. Isn't that unbelievable?"

Emiko's blood sugar was spiking hard.

"Welcome, Mayu-and hello, Wanta. Please come in"

Mayu seemed skittish.

"You're sure it's alright?"

_*Kid, you are badly overdoing it.*_

"I'm sure."

_*Okay-somehow, in some way we can't comprehend, Zuzu from "It's A Wonderful Life" escaped from the silver screen. All we need to do is contact Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed to take her back-no wait. That's ridiculous. Foolish-both of them are dead.* _

Quietly approaching Kouta, Emi made her concerns clear. He nodded.

"I get your concerns, Auntie. I appreciate them. But Mayu-chan is very much for real. She was homeless, living off scraps from a kind bread merchant and sleeping in a woodpile shelter on the beach. The vendors in that area can confirm this."

Emi saw Yuka pour a bowl of food for Wanta inside the kitchen, then looked back at Kouta.

"So all these people saw a half-dressed little girl for months and did nothing?"

Kouta looked down.

"They feared she would become their responsibility. But Auntie, I have proof-sad proof of how and why she ran away. I saw something in-"

Barks and yowls erupted. Mayu came running out of the kitchen.

"Ummmm-Nyu-chan tried to eat some of Wanta's food-and that made Wanta upset. She coughed it out-then he ate it-and then he coughed it out-and well-you better get in here. Please?"

Emiko went to break up the fight, and saw Mayu getting just as agitated and confused as anyone else. She smiled as they tried to dispel the chaos. She put a hand on Mayu's shoulder as she shook nervously. Mayu looked up at her.

"Kid-welcome to the family. Such-as it is."

Mayu smiled, and it was still too lovely a smile to be for real, yet somehow it was.

_*But what is it that Kouta-Kun found out about her home life?*_

"NYUUUUUUU!"

"YIPPPPPPPPPP!"


	3. Chapter 3

_1_

Emiko felt the moment was right. Mayu was anxious.

"Are you sure this is gonna work?"

Yuka seconded the concern.

"Mama, it's only been twenty minutes."

Emiko nodded.

"This even worked with you and Kanae. It should work here."

Kouta was in the next room, otherwise Emiko wouldn't have brought up Kanae.

"Kouta, you bring her in-then you do your thing, Mayu-chan."

Kouta walked his rambunctious charge into the room, while Mayu walked and held little Wanta. Nyu sniffed and looked sad.

"Nyuuuuu..."

Wanta whimpered lowly. At Emiko's direction, Mayu brought the pup's face forward to Nyu's, where he licked as Nyu giggled.

"Nyu! Nyu!"

Grabbing Wanta up, Nyu continued to giggle as the small dog kept on licking and poking at her with his face. Kouta smiled at the sight.

"Seems like they're friends again."

Yuka looked astonished.

"Mother, how did you know?"

Emiko shrugged.

"How could I not? The way to get two feuding kids under control is to separate them. Before long, they miss each other more than they ever hated each other. Now, is everyone ready for their assignments? Good! Yuka, you make tea and biscuits. Mayu-chan, you babysit these two-and by that I mean, babysit Nyu-Wanta can probably take care of himself. Kouta-Kun-help me in picking up a pizza with some shrimp rolls. Ohhh-if I only had the number for the place, I could call ahead."

Kouta wrote the number down on a piece of paper.

"Here you are, Auntie."

Yuka looked at the phone number. She was starting to smolder.

"You remembered Karito Pizzeria's number?"

Kouta nodded.

"Your mother and my father always ordered from there, back when. Kanae loved the stuffed shells."

Kouta and his aunt all but fled the house after that. Kouta shook his head as he walked.

"I did it again, didn't I?"

Emi grabbed him and held him close.

"She means well, Kouta-Kun-I think."

When they arrived at the restaurant, the order was not yet ready, so the two waited outside and talked.

"What is it that you know about Mayu-Chan's house-life?"

Kouta removed a newspaper article from a zippered pocket in his jacket.

"It's not confirmation. But when you put the pieces together, it fits. Oh, Emikoba. Why would this happen? How could it?"

Emiko took and read the clipping. She saw that Kouta had not merely jumped to conclusions.

_*...suspect, arrested for molesting a woman on the train, was also a suspect in several attacks and harassment of young women and girls in the area. Upon arrival, his current wife went into a rage, demanding to know why he would do such a thing. When the suspect made a snide remark about young girls to a visiting SAT agent, the agent opened fire and killed the suspect, ending his career...*_

Emiko saw the sadness on Kouta's face. The anger. She doubted her own face looked that much different.

"Mayu's parents?"

Kouta nodded as he put away the article.

"I recognized both their names and faces from when we went to see Mayu-Chan's mother. I spoke to a police officer who knew of this. What the paper didn't say was that, when the man was arrested, he was supposedly searching for his step-daughter. Also, he had a pattern of marrying women with young daughters. Ohhhh-I wish I could dig him up!"

What happened to Mayu was hardly unheard of. Too often, there was no one to aid or help these children. Which is why in that moment Emiko was never more pleased with her daughter and her nephew. Pleased, and very, very proud.

"Does Yuka know?"

His eyes were closed, as though fighting off tears.

"No. Yuka-chan would smother her with efforts to be protective. Ever since she blushed when I patted her on the head, I've picked up that Mayu-chan likes to have some distance. Since I'm a guy, it's probably worse, but I even fear that Yuka might want to strangle that cold mother of Mayu-Chan's. I don't know if I could stop her - or if I'd want to."

Emiko moved in on one last thing, though it was a bit of a risk.

"Kouta? Is it possible that-just maybe-you knew Nyu before this, from your last visit to Kamakura?"

Emiko fought off panic as Kouta's face became blank, looking almost bleached, and then twisted as though in horror and pain. Just as suddenly, this storm passed. The trauma had once again demanded its due. Kouta's locked memories stayed right where they were.

"I do get this odd nostalgic feeling around her. Like she was from a story-but not about me. A story about someone else. I don't think the story ended happily, but I can't remember the details. I guess it's possible, Emikoba. But wouldn't you think I'd remember a girl with pink hair and horns?"

This was her sister's boy, to be sure. Those brief moments of almost frightening intensity, vanishing as fast as they came.

"Of course you would, Kouta-Kun. I guess I just see how well you two get along, is all."

They collected and paid for the food, which was anxiously awaited. Nyu for her part ate the meat, vegetables and cheese off the pizza slice, offering the bread and crust to a waiting Wanta, who snapped it up, struggling a bit with the hard edge of the crust. After she ate, Mayu was taken aside by Emiko.

"I hear you like your new school."

"I really do, Emiko-Dono!"

The child was being forcefully polite, but Emiko well understood why.

"Is your room at Maple House okay?"

Her smile was infectious. A child for whom safety was once just a dream now dreamed safely and slept the sleep of the just. Because of her baby, and her sister's baby.

"It's so big. I wish I had a sister to share it with. But it's very pleasant. I-I love-that place. Emiko-Sama, I want to help with the chores, but Yuka-San insists that Kouta-San do them all. I don't want to be a freeloader."

Emiko kept feeling the pleasant buzz from the small but incredible thing her kin had done, in recovering this young life from the scrap-pile.

_*My child has adopted a child of her own. That makes me a-a-a Mama, once again! Yes, my child has adopted a little sister. I am an Auntie and a Mama. Not a Gran-Not that. At all.*_

"Help out wherever you can. They'll need that help. They need something, anyway. Kouta is alright for now, but my daughter really needs to get-"

Mayu's head turned towards her, and Emiko toned down her words.

"-to get used to this new situation. Uhh-yeah. Mayu-chan, your new school is near here, right?"

"Yes, Emiko-Sama."

Emiko would not stoop to spy on her family and residents. But if one of them wanted to talk, where was the harm?

"What if, on Thursdays, you came here for lunch? I'd enjoy the company, and we could talk. Alright?"

The girl without warning clamped her arms around Emiko before pulling back.

"Yes. I would like that, Emiko-Sama. I would like that very much. Thank You!"

If the girl's need for stability and affection had not been evident before, it surely was now.

"You know, Kouta sometimes calls me Emikoba. How about you call me Koba? I'd like that if you would."

Mayu did some ciphering.

"But if Yuka-San is acting as my guardian mother, then doesn't that make you my..."

Mayu saw the glare forming on her host's face, and quickly found her way back to safe ground.

"Koba! You are my Auntie as well as his! Koba?"

Their terms established, Emiko nodded.

"Yes, Mayu-chan?"

"Is Yuka-San in love with Kouta-San?"

On the other side of the room, Nyu kept sitting right on a flustered Kouta's lap, only to keep being pulled off by Yuka-who promptly got her lap sat on, instead.

"I think my nephew is that lovable, yes."

Polite to a fault, Mayu never said that Emiko had not answered her question. The group finally got up to leave, Nyu's hug including a hair-rub, and Mayu's a reminder of the Thursday promise. But things would not go as smoothly as they might like, that next time.

_2_

Mayu did not enter with the bounce and jaunt in her step that Emiko had seen just a week prior.

_*I guess they had to harshly remind her to do her homework, or something. Kids that age are like that.*_

In fact, both would only wish that it were something that mundane. The meal was pleasant, but Mayu once again looked markedly less so.

"Koba?"

Emiko braced herself for any number of potential statements, from difficulty with a subject to the catty popular girls at school.

"Yes, Mayu-Chan?"

She would not be ready for this.

"Is Kouta-San a pervert?"

Emiko was Kouta's aunt, and his late mother had been like her own first baby. She had been a surrogate mother for him, and had wanted to be his second mother by law. She thought it likely he might one day soon become her son, if Yuka didn't kill or scare him off first. To her credit, she fought off all of these myriad instincts to support a child she knew had been hurt in the worst way.

"Well-did he do something to make you think he was one?"

Mayu would years later catch just how delicately Emi phrased this question, so as to neither encourage fear nor to dismiss Mayu's fears.

"He-took a bath with Nyu-chan."

Emiko had thought her delicate phrasing was done with. To coin a phrase, not hardly.

"They were together in the bath?"

She had feared something like this, but had honestly thought better of her nephew.

"Yes. Just sitting there-staring at each other."

Either Mayu was using a new kid's euphemism for the act, or something was off.

"How close together were they?"

Mayu looked like she wondered why this was important, but answered without hesitation.

"He was at one end of the onsen, and she was at the other. I think their feet or their legs were touching-while they were naked!"

Emiko wanted to snark about how leg-humps were not how most people did it, but kept focusing on the scared young girl before her.

"You know what I think? I think maybe Kouta-Kun was doing something stupid, and he got caught. He is a young guy, and when a girl who looks like Nyu jumps all over him, he gets excited and greedy. Did he try and explain himself?"

Mayu sniffed.

"Hmmph! He tried, but it's kind of obvious what he was doing in there, don't you think?"

Emiko caught the tone. She loved her daughter, but dearly did not want to raise another Yuka.

"Even if he were guilty as sin, and even if he lied, don't you owe it to him to hear his explanation?"

Mayu shook her head.

"I don't want to distrust Kouta-San. I want him to be the good person I thought he was before. But Nyu is like a child, so how can I feel safe if he treats her like that?"

_*Because Nyu is a bouncy-boobied nightmare sexpot with anime hair and all the modesty of Wanta-chan. You, sweet child, still look like a girl, and I know for a fact he knows your secret and wishes to protect you.*_

Which is of course exactly what she did not say.

"I'll tell you what. I give you Koba's permission that, should Kouta ever be menacing you in that way, you should kick him hard where it counts, and tell him that his Emikoba already knows and said that she would believe Mayu-Chan's account, and then you may stay with me."

Mayu still looked doubtful.

"But Kouta is your kin. I'm not."

Emi shook her head.

"Kouta-Kun told me he would take responsibility for you. That makes us kin as well, and if he fails to keep you safe, that reflects poorly on me. So in that case, I have to step in, just to keep the family's oaths upheld."

She tried in her own way to seal the deal, forgetting that even a hurt young girl is still a young girl at her core.

"I believe in my nephew. If he is doing wrong with Nyu, then he needs to stop. But even if he is being stupid with her, I doubt you have anything to worry about. I don't think he'd want to ever molest you."

The line had been crossed.

"Why? What's wrong with me?"

Emiko very briefly felt disturbed, wondering if her horrific experiences hadn't twisted Mayu somehow. Quickly though, she caught on : Mayu didn't want to be seen as meat, but she didn't mind being seen as pretty. This was one of the differences between a man she could trust and one she plainly could not.

"Kouta told me that he was very happy you felt safe at Maple Inn. He wouldn't want to menace you, I think, because that would make you feel unsafe."

Mayu bit her lip.

"He's said things like that before, but now those same words that reassured me, frighten me. Koba, I've liked Kouta-San. I want to like him again."

Emiko knew of no easy way through this mine-field.

"Have you spoken to Yuka about this?"

Mayu's face turned red.

"Are you crazy? She'd kill him. So far, he hasn't done anything that wrong. But Yuka-Chan takes everything he does and convenes a tribunal before he can even-"

Mayu stopped herself.

"Oh, Emiko-Sama! I am so sorry. I didn't mean to call you or Yuka-chan crazy. But she really does fly off the handle sometimes-and besides, she's maybe in love with him-"

The next words would confirm one of Emi's worst theories about Mayu's upbringing.

"-and what if she decides that, if he's paying attention to me, I should just disappear?"

Mayu had to get back to school, so the conversation ended there. But for Emi, it would replay all the rest of the day, as she worked around the chain of properties she managed, until she got to the one nearest her heart. Luckily, outside of it was a man walking a small dog.

"Kouta?"

"Auntie-hey, Wanta-it's Auntie."

Wanta was petted and cuddled while Kouta provided his side of events. Emi was relieved that Kouta did not even attempt to call Mayu a liar.

"So Nyu just climbed in with you?"

He nodded.

"I'd put a lock on the door, plus I'd gotten Yuka to keep watch while I bathe. I lied-I told her that Nyu nearly walked in on me a few times, and that seemed to do it. "

She looked him in the eye.

"Tell me you didn't have sex with Nyu-chan, Kouta-Kun. Tell me this as your late mother's sister."

She was allowing him no wiggle-room at all.

"I didn't! Auntie, she's like a baby!"

Emi hated having to press him, but if his problems and memory lapses now included abusing his charges, she wanted to cut that off cleanly.

"No baby ever looked liked her."

Kouta now looked a bit angry.

"I guess I never had Yuka's trust, and I lost Mayu's by stupidity. But now you, too?"

Feeling that she had the answer she needed, Emi placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I trust you, Kouta-Kun. But this situation, you and three young women, each liking you in their own way, and with their own problems doing so? This situation, I don't trust completely. Now, have you tried to get through to Nyu about respecting your privacy?"

Kouta looked down. Seeing his sadness, Wanta began to whimper.

"Nyu's gone, Auntie. Just this afternoon, a family member found her, and took her back home."

Emiko heard the tale of this reunion, and had her own doubts about it. Had Kouta merely mentioned the name of the one that took Nyu, Emi would have known that it was not Nyu's family that took her back-rather it was hers, Kouta's and Yuka's.

She would have known no comfort from this thought.

_3 _

Kouta's account also included a smart-ass remark Mayu had made about bathing with Nyu. Emiko once more became angered by how Mayu's original family had placed so much distrust in her young soul.

_*Time to let a bad mother know she is exactly that.*_

With so many properties to rent, Emi had plenty of real estate connections, enough to put a house to a name. When this was done, she made a box lunch, cleared her schedule and moved out.

As bold as she was being, Emiko told herself she would never have attempted this had the stepfather still been alive. She could handle herself, but a sicko like that often knew how to handle people who knew how to handle themselves. It was even said that some like him could take kicks to the crotch better than most men, having had it happen before.

_*There is the risk Mayu-chan will find out what I've done, and resent my knowing her secret. Well, let her. Gran-Auntie will have her say.*_

While the distance was remarkably short, Emi kept in mind that, to Mayu, the walk from here to the beach she once called her home must have seemed like the Journey To The West. At last, she rounded the corner and saw the house that must have figured in Mayu's nightmares. Outside of it, a mother was half-arguing, half-pleading with a man who confronted her. Emi chose to keep well back from this till they were done. This was a pity, for if she had overheard what the two said to each other, Mayu's fate might have been very different indeed.

"You can't pay me that little for my home! Where will I go with so little money? What can I do?"

The man had once had enormous sympathy for this woman. That had evaporated a long time ago.

"This was once my house, remember? I tried my best to be a good husband, and bear with you. You chased me off, and now that you're the one who has to flee, I couldn't care less. So you take what I'm offering, or I will identify you as the wife of that monster, and let all the families of all those girls come and let you have it, for being his enabler. And one more condition, bitch! Where is my daughter? Where is Mayu-Chan?"

Her look was pure spite, and who she blamed for her self-inflicted wounds was also brutally evident.

"You want to know where your precious poppet is? Huh? Well, she has become a whore! She was lured off, months ago, by a pimp named Kouta! Find him, and maybe you'll find what's left of her-if she hasn't passed from venereal disease!"

Disheartened but having secured his goal, the man called Kenjiro left, to go home to his little daughter Hana, and his wife, Arika, who had also once lost a child from a prior marriage, a girl with blue hair and horns, taken from her by a man named Kurama. Luckily for all of them, Emi had not heard her new 'niece' called a whore, nor had she heard her sister's boy called a pimp. If she had, she would have killed the woman then sobbing on the ground.

"Why? Why do you beset me so? A faithless husband, a wanton daughter-a vengeful ex-spouse-harassing phone calls from families too foolish to lock up their little open-legged sluts? What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?"

The fight had gone out of Emiko as she heard this self-centered whining. This creature wasn't worth crushing or hitting. Through her tears, the bad mother saw the good one, but only barely registered the presence of another human being. Again, she pleaded to what she saw as an uncaring creation.

"What do you want me to do?"

Emi spoke only two words before turning around and retreating into reality.

"Just Disappear."

Which is precisely what the bad mother did, fleeing to Hokkaido, where the aspersion she cast upon her daughter became the fate she herself faced, when people she had known there spurned her for debt-skipping.

Emi walked down the street, taking at least some of the path Mayu did when she fled. Down a ways, she saw an unkempt woman who got out of the car she looked like she was also living out of.

"Damn girl! Damn Dog! I mean, she was homeless! How was she gonna care for it? Kill em both if I ever see them again!"

Down back further, this woman would in turn pass another woman, one wearing a jester's cap, with pink hair. At a glare, the ranting woman would fall over dead. Emi, who stopped to drink some water, saw the pink-haired woman approach and smiled.

"Nyu?"

This was in fact one of the most dangerous moments in Emiko's entire life, though she would only realize it much later.

"Nyu, it is you! Are you alright? Kouta told me you found your family."

By all rights, this encounter should have ended with Emiko's death, achieved in any number of ways, from the undetectable to the utterly grotesque. For she was not speaking to the silly, gentle creature whose greatest sin was intrusiveness.

"I'm fine, thanks. Gotta go."

If her well-meaning kin at Maple House sometimes overlooked this girl's sudden bursts of coherent speech, she herself could not.

"Wow-I guess you are doing all right. Well, you've gotta go and so do I. So let me wish you well-oh here-I won't have time for this box lunch-you take it. Keep in touch, alright?"

Lucy, who viewed all charity with suspicion if not contempt, was held back from killing the mother of the woman she once loudly threatened to kill by two things. One, she was horrifically hungry, and the meal would keep her from losing her battle to keep from reverting to Nyu.

"Too damned nice."

Two, this was the only woman she had ever called Mama. She told herself other reasons, while trying to keep a demon in check, like, doing this would have messed things up for Kouta. But in the end, the idea of killing a Mama who had held and not spurned her was not something even the world's most prolific murderer could manage.

_4_

A few weeks passed, weeks in which Emi did her deliberate best to let her children live their lives without her, as she knew they must. But she had to admit, after activities at school kept Mayu from having their weekly lunch for two weeks in a row, she was looking forward to it. The news of the Inn held more than a few surprises.

"Nyu is back? Just like that?"

Mayu sipped her soup before responding.

"Yeah. They found her near the shrines. Kouta-San won't talk about what happened when he went back to the university, but I guess I was right. That Professor Kakuzawa wasn't her uncle, after all."

Emi did something she had only seen in TV and Movies, at the mention of the Professor's name. She spit out the tea she had been drinking.

"Koba? Are you all right?"

Emi faked off some biscuit crumbs getting caught in her throat, and changed the subject. Obviously, if Nyu was back, her spurned family did not have their messiah, so all was well.

"And how is Nyu? Can she talk now?"

The changed subject almost took Mayu by surprise, but she did not challenge it.

"Yuka and Kouta said she seemed to when they found her, but that passed. As to how she is? Well, she's a pervert."

Mayu looked at her host.

"Koba, I apologize for suspecting Kouta-San. I knew how Nyu could be, but I didn't fully believe it till she attacked all of us."

Emi kept her tea in, this time.

"How did she attack you, dear?"

Mayu shook her head.

"She snuck into Kouta-San's bed, nude. She's done that to me and Yuka-San-and at least once to Wanta-don't ask. But Yuka-San got upset-"

Emi's head was spinning.

"Upset with Wanta?"

Mayu was now getting confused.

"No, upset with Kouta-San. Wanta just wanted his doghouse back. Anyway, Yuka-San is all upset, and Kouta-San is pleading that it wasn't his fault-"

"He didn't notice a naked girl in his bed?"

Mayu shrugged.

"When he's asleep, Kouta-San barely registers Yuka-San's foot kicking his head. But then, they start kissing and Yuka's breast gets rubbed..."

"Well, those two had to start in sometime."

Mayu was very close to glaring at someone she respected.

"No-Nyu was the one doing this to Yuka. Kouta-San was just kind of dazed-please don't interrupt me again, all respect-and I walked in on this. Trying to get out, and denouncing all adults as dirty-I saw Nyu walk up-and she grabbed my boob. She-was disappointed that I wasn't bigger. I mean, I do the exercises! I say nightly prayers! Like it's my fault I live in the Oppai-Sou! I guess I never really had any worries about Kouta, did I? I mean, he could be the biggest pervert on Earth, and how would he notice me with the boob-quadruplets around and in his face, and Yuka with her tons of soiled panties-that I have to wash! Now I ask you, is that fair?"

Mayu caught herself, and blushed mightily. Emiko, for her part, smiled and started to laugh, which set Mayu to laughing as well. When they stopped, Mayu shook her head.

"I now trust Kouta-San again. But-he's still a guy. I want to show him proper respect-and maybe show that I am grateful and caring of what he has given me. Did you know he took a job to help with the food bills? This is a man I would like to call Papa-but Papas can be very bad men, and you don't realize it until it's too late. I want to trust once more, but I could not bear being betrayed once again. Am I making any sense, Koba? What will I do if I grow up in blind fear of men, who are about half the population?"

Mayu would have to leave soon, so Emi pulled out a CD.

"This was always one of Yuka's favorites. It helped to calm her fears about the future."

The song began to play, plain as day-Doris Day.

_***When I was just a little girl  
I asked my mother, what will I be  
Will I be pretty, will I be rich  
Here's what she said to me.**_

Que Sera, Sera,  
Whatever will be, will be  
The future's not ours, to see  
Que Sera, Sera  
What will be, will be.

When I was young, I fell in love  
I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead  
Will we have rainbows, day after day  
Here's what my sweetheart said.

Que Sera, Sera,  
Whatever will be, will be  
The future's not ours, to see  
Que Sera, Sera  
What will be, will be.

Now I have children of my own  
They ask their mother, what will I be  
Will I be handsome, will I be rich  
I tell them tenderly.

Que Sera, Sera,  
Whatever will be, will be  
The future's not ours, to see  
Que Sera, Sera  
What will be, will be.*

Mayu's smile when the song was done made it all worth it.

"Mayu-chan, what are you doing after school? I'm making some pudding-pie."

Mayu shook her head.

"Many thanks, Koba. But I go down to the beach after school, and talk to...someone."

Emi nodded.

"Just be careful. Whatever you do, don't litter there. The town hired some psychopath as the new garbage policeman. I saw him pull a gun on one litterbug!"

Mayu quietly excused herself after that, seeming to roll her eyes at that comment.

The next Thursday came and went without Mayu's visit. The schools had been directed not to release any children, except to go home, due to a crisis of some sort at the beachfront. Reaching a police blockade, she met Kouta there, who said that once more, Nyu had gotten away from him. A call to Maple Inn revealed only a worried Yuka who did give the happy news that she was now surer of Kouta's love than she had been. As she hung up, Emi heard beautiful singing in the background, and wondered what record was playing.

Mayu again begged off the next Thursday, but requested that instead a dinner be made - as Emi now would have to approve yet another new resident.

"Thank you for doing this, Mother."

Emi was actually glad to have them all over. A lot happened in Maple Inn, it seemed, especially when her back was turned.

"Your instincts on new residents have proven good so far, Yuka. But why isn't Nyu wearing her cap?"

Nyu seemed to hear this, and responded.

"Nyu too warm for hat, Emi-San."

Emi looked at the girl in wonder, and then again at her daughter, who nodded.

"It's sticking, this time. She's learning to talk a little more, everyday-but we don't know how she lost her horns."

Emiko saw that indeed, the most unique feature on Nyu's head was gone. Her horns were broken, and now almost covered entirely by her hair. But now someone arrived with Mayu. Someone known to Emiko.

"Emiko-Sama. It's good to see you again."

The soft-spoken girl got a quick hug from Emi, and then from Nyu, whose hug seemed to make the girl nervous.

"Nozomi-Chan! Oh, look how you've grown! You've filled out so much."

Mayu steamed at this mention, but a look from Emi calmed her.

"Yuka, is this your new resident? Because your Kohai needs no approval from me."

Nozomi shook her head.

"I am sleeping over sometimes. But I'm not the one moving in."

That would soon change. But for then and there, Emi heard Kouta trying to corral the real new resident.

"Oh, go in. My auntie is very nice."

"I hope she's nicer than you!"

"I hope you're a lot more polite with her!"

"I am always polite-you're just mean!"

"I'm so mean-but who came to get you that night, and carried you on his back all the way home?"

"I'll go in. But she better be really nice."

In front of Kouta in the doorway, Emi saw her. A nicely dressed, petite young girl who somehow looked much younger than her apparent age. A girl with blue hair, wearing a girl's dress cap that she then removed.

"Nana is very happy to meet you, Yuka-San's Mother."

Odd hair color-and horns. On a girl they just happened to find somewhere.

_*But I'm certain it's all just a remarkable coincidence, right?*_


	4. Chapter 4

_1_

If Emiko had been suspicious of Mayu prior to meeting her, it was the opposite with Nana. It wasn't that the girl wasn't likeable, or well-behaved. But if Nyu seemed to have something hidden about her, Emiko could not shake the sense that Nana was actually hiding something. Emiko, who had hidden her family's true heritage her whole life, did not like secrets. Because eventually, all secrets were revealed, and when that happened, at least one person was usually enraged, and at least one other was heartbroken.

"More, Please!"

"You can't just hold out your bowl like a beggar!"

"Nana said please!"

"You demanded it like it was your due."

"Kouta-San is always finding fault with Nana."

Also hard to figure was the apparent feud between Kouta and the newest resident of Maple House. While the girl was a bit forward and lacking in some social graces, it was apparent she came from a family good enough to have instilled basic manners in her.

"That's because Nana-chan sometimes acts like a girl half her age."

"Nana _**is**_ a girl half her age!"

At that utterly confusing, badly phrased (yet in the end, wholly accurate) comment, Emi nodded to Mayu to begin gathering the soup-bowls, and to Yuka to gather the salad plates. Once in the kitchen, two young women were pumped for information by a slightly older one.

"Why don't Kouta and Nana-chan seem to like each other?"

In fact, Emiko already saw one reason : The two were made very much from the same mold, and that meant a clash was all but inevitable, until they figured out how to get along. But specifics on how this feud started were what she wanted, and what she now got, starting from Yuka.

"Well, I guess Kouta never really forgave Nana for attacking Nyu when she first showed up at our home."

This part, she hadn't heard about at all.

"Why did she attack Nyu? Another groping session gone wrong? I swear, women are somehow worse than men when it comes to..."

Mayu filled in some of the gaps, but others opened as she went.

"So you happen to encounter, to the best of your knowledge, the only other horned girl in the entire world, who can, unlike Nyu, talk and act coherently, yet who is secretive about where she might have come from, and like Nyu, disappears suddenly only to return bedraggled and exhausted, like she'd been ambushed and beaten up by a long-lost sibling or something?"

Yuka rolled her eyes.

"Mama, this isn't one of your soap operas."

"My daughter is right. No decent soap opera would accept the script that our lives have become. Now, since apparently only Mayu-KUN has the balls to tell me the unvarnished truth on a true regular basis, I'll ask her to continue."

But now Mayu seemed hesitant. Emi shook her head.

"The Kun and balls thing was meant as a compliment, dear."

Mayu looked down.

"Is that how Koba sees me? As a way of keeping an eye on our family? Should I have ever even told you about Kouta and Nyu being in the bath together?"

Before Emi could stop Mayu's gathering tears, Yuka reacted as Yuka might.

"The bath? Together? When was this?"

Mayu turned on Yuka in what was for most mere huffiness, but for the polite girl, was in fact a fury.

"It was months-almost a year ago, and it hasn't happened since. I know, because for a long while, I was shamefully watching their every movement, making sure they were never left alone together. It happened because while I love Nyu, she is a sex fiend, and yet you and I keep focusing on poor Kouta-San. You would have beaten him up for it, and not heard a single word he was saying!"

If Yuka could be accused of such irrational moments, Mayu was the one on the verge of hysteria at that point.

"We have this wonderful place together, and Emi-Koba has made that even more so. We who were once so miserable and alone have friends and family. But we keep asking questions about it. Even now, Kouta-San keeps pressing poor Nana on her origins. But isn't it obvious that, wherever Nana and Nyu came from, it was a bad place that they were trying to get away from? Sometimes-that's how it is. I notice that Kouta-San never talks about how he was raised, and somehow that's all right. I guess its lucky for Nozomi-Chan she has no secrets in her past, or you'd all be hiring a private detective to...to..."

Mayu looked flushed, sat down and drank her tea. She closed her eyes and slumped down.

"I apologize for my unseemly outburst. Koba and Yuka-San deserve better from me."

Emi was prepared to handle this. But to her great surprise, someone else was even more prepared. Yuka sat down and held her surrogate daughter.

"I am hard on Kouta, I know. The future once held such great things for him, and I feel bad that his past struck at him the way it did. That concern comes out the wrong way. It almost always does. I was dismissive of Nozomi at first, too. I thought she was a weakling. You're right. I do know how Nyu can be, and I am afraid she'll steal Kouta from me. But I love her too, and if anyone besides me were to have him, I could almost bear it being her. Almost. Yes, we do ask questions. Maybe even too many questions. Maybe those questions could undo what we have together. But Mayu? Sometimes the most dangerous questions of all are the ones we don't ask. It's like the Christian Bible says about the end of the world - it will come like a thief in the night, and yet there will be signs for those who look for them. If we press all of you too hard, and risk losing you by asking so much, it's not because we don't understand the risk. It's because the world won't always let us ignore it. Think, Baka-Chan. If Nana and Nyu do come from a bad place, then maybe the bad people from that bad place might come looking for them. That's why we don't use the police or hospital anymore."

Mayu seemed open to the argument, but not quite fully.

"But doesn't asking questions among ourselves lead to things that could help the bad people to find them anyway?"

Emi truly saw her little girl for the first time. This was no mere hint of womanhood.

"Forewarned is forearmed. How can we know what knowledge might be dangerous, if we avoid all questions?"

Impressed again that her baby was no longer simply that, Emi moved to finish this conversation, already far-off track.

"I did use Mayu-chan as a telescope into Maple House. But acting out of love, I will not apologize. How can I have such a wonderful family and not be concerned for what goes on, and what might make them unhappy?"

Mayu seemed to understand, at least in part.

"I will learn what I can from Nana-chan, and, unless she swears me to secrecy, I will tell what I learn to Koba. Koba may then decide if I should tell Yuka-San."

Since this obviously took her down from being almost frantic, her elders allowed the posting of terms.

"Alright, then. Girls-how do we make peace between Kouta and Nana-chan?"

Emi's question seemed one neither wanted asked, nor did either seem brave enough to even try and venture an answer. But as they re-entered the living room, this was made a largely moot point.

"How did he do that?!"

Nana was standing up on the couch, pointing at the TV. Kouta saw the women emerging, and toned down his probable response to this.

"Please sit down, and I'll explain it to you."

"You will?"

Kouta again fought off annoyance, just not entirely.

"I just said that I would. Now, you start. Ask me your first question."

Nana excitedly sat down, and did just that.

"Who was that boy on the TV screen?"

Kouta answered, and Nana became even more confused.

"The boy's name is Fried Rice Dish?"

Since this was as reasonable a discourse as the two had yet had, Kouta kept his cool.

"That's too literal a pronunciation of his name. It's meant to be more of a pun-a trick word that means something else, too."

"Nana thinks that words are too tricky to start with. Will you explain some more?"

Kouta explained more, and of course this led to him having to explain even more.

"But didn't Carrot-Sky-Man marry Gym Pants Girl?"

As she continually placed the wrong emphasis on the characters' names, Kouta fought to keep his head from exploding.

"No-they remained just friends. He married Chi-Chi."

"What kind of name is Chi-Chi?"

Kouta paused, and began to blush. He looked to Yuka, who began to blush as well. They got no help from their slightly addled friend with pink hair.

"Nyu! Nyu! Nyu! Nyu!"

Finally, Yuka gave Kouta the out he was looking for.

"Kouta-San, just tell her what it means-and then no more of it."

But as he coughed and hesitated, Mayu stepped forward to save her less worldly guardians.

"Nana-Chan? It refers to Milk. A lot of names on that series are themed on food."

Nana nodded, and all felt relief at a subject avoided. Almost.

"Oh. Nana thought maybe it had something to do with her big boobs."

If a cartoon faint were really possible, almost everyone there except Nana and Nyu would have done it then. As they froze, Nyu looked at Nana.

"They're very strange sometimes."

For once, Nana was in perfect agreement with her nemesis.

"They sure are."

With their efforts at side-stepping an awkward subject rendered totally pointless, the group that for the moment had finally stopped growing sat down to have dessert. Nana for some reason hesitated around her sherbet, but thanked her hostess, who had a surprise for all. Yuka looked at what she was given with the frozen treat.

"Fortune Cookies, Mother?"

Emi nodded.

"They're stupid, but they're like ice cream cones in texture and taste - good for dipping in the sherbet, and the fortunes are always good for a laugh. Kouta?"

Kouta opened his and read what it had to offer.

"_You will be known for keeping to your word_."

Yuka went next.

"_Your warmth charms even your enemy_. Strange."

Mayu was nodded to, and opened hers.

"_You choose to believe in good things_."

Nozomi almost excitedly broke hers open.

"_Your words are a comfort to those facing despair_. Oh-that's so nice."

Emi couldn't wait any more.

"Hmmm. What? _You offer firm tender support from the background_. O-kay."

Nana stared at hers.

"Nana is not sure she wants to know her fortune. Nana likes how things are right here and now, with all of you. Besides, Emiko-Sama made such a nice cookie - Nana doesn't want to break it."

After the concept of stores and phony humorous fortunes was explained, Nana grinned and broke open her cookie. She began to tear up. Mayu read it for her.

"_Your well-loved one will say that you are indispensible to them_. Wow, some of these cookies have really long sayings-Nana-chan?"

Others stared in concern at the crying Nana, but Kouta was by her side in a heartbeat, guiding her to the couch.

"Kouta-San? Please tell Nana more about the Balls Program?"

Since it got her mind off of whatever was making her sad, the two continued to bond over the works of Toriyama. It was a long and detailed talk.

But Kouta would not, no matter how much he was pestered, speak of GT. After Nana fell asleep, Kouta smiled.

"I never thought watching that show in the hospital would ever prove valuable."

When Mayu nearly asked about the hospital, Yuka silenced her with a look. Still, they would all learn soon enough. Emi moved Nana to her room, waited for her to awaken, sighed and moved to interrogate her. If this girl was to stay with her family, there was no choice.

"Emiko-Sama let me sleep in her bed? It's so high off the floor."

"It's for my back, Nana-chan. Doctor's orders. Took me a while to get used to it. May I ask you a question?"

Nana seemed to tense, and this pushed Emi to somewhat sidestep a slower path leading up to her query.

"Where do you come from?"

"Nana can't say anything about that."

Her answer was stark and matter-of-fact. That she was hiding something was beyond dispute. That it could have been literally anything for any reason at all did occur to Emi as well. But she had horns and had shown up out of nowhere. She could tell this child was as lost as Mayu had been -maybe more so. She did not seem at all vicious, in fact she seemed very far from it. But having kept one herself all her life, Emiko did not like secrets, and it also seemed obvious that Nana was keeping some.

"Nana can't say anything or Nana won't say anything?"

Nana seemed to take a second to reason this out before responding.

"Both, I think."

Emi pressed Nana and perhaps her luck as well.

"Why did you attack Nyu that night?"

The girl looked a mixture of angry and sad.

"Nana apologized for that - to Nyu, Kouta, and Yuka too!"

Immediately Emi knew a lighter hand was called for.

"Yes, I know. Also, you very graciously gave up your money to pay for the damage you caused."

The praise seemed to help calm Nana down. In fact, Kouta had hardly needed all that money to pay for the damages. Yuka's abuse of his gullibility on the repair and house maintenance front meant that he had gotten quite good at doing piecemeal repairs on Maple House, so the rest of Nana's money, he placed in a savings passbook, which he then asked his aunt to hold.

"Nana, I am less concerned with tasking you for attacking Nyu, then finding out why it happened at all. Did she grope you? She's been known to do that, and it can be very upsetting."

Nana was not used to handling layered questions like this, so she gave away a lot more than she intended, now that her defenses were down and an option to blame Nyu was on the table.

"Nana had never met Nyu before that night. Nyu jumped out and surprised me. I was very hungry, kind of light-headed, and Nyu all of a sudden looked like someone who once hurt me."

Emi gambled successfully on Nana's utter unworldliness.

"Without telling me about this other person too much, did they have the same color hair and body type as Nyu? Is that why you mistook Nyu for this other girl?"

Nana was by no means dumb, yet Emi's tactic was not caught on to.

"Yes. This other girl-the mean one I can't talk about-did look like Nyu enough to fool me."

Emi was beginning to feel rotten inside, but played one last trick.

"The one that Nana promised to not to tell anything must be very proud of her. I hope you can tell him one day for me she keeps her secrets very well."

Nana left the room, happy and proud, never realizing, she had all but confirmed that the one Nana feared was another horned girl with pink hair, that her silence was the result of a promise, and that the one she had promised this to was a man she held in high regard - like a parent.

_*Yes-perhaps now I should go and steal her ice cream. Make my treachery complete.*_

Protecting her family didn't always mean winning a popularity or a morality contest. This she knew, but it never got any easier. Since she had engaged in harsh deception for their sakes, she chose then to engage in harsh truth-telling to Kouta. But in this he surprised her.

"Auntie, I know she's been having fun with me on the chores. But I finally don't mind."

"How can you not mind?"

Her little sister's quiet acceptance of life showed again in her son's eyes.

"I'm kind of-welll-pent-up, with all these girls around. Yuka's not ready for certain things, and even with Nyu maturing, it would still be very wrong, even if she were ready. I've been blazing through my homework and tests, and-I need something to do. That place needs so much upkeep, I can't think about the past or-or anything else too much. Plus, whether I meant to or not, I hurt Yuka by not remembering. So let her think she's getting me back. It makes her smile, and she smiles too rarely to suit me. I just wish my hands didn't hurt from pulling so many weeds."

A voice was heard that seemed to indicate further peace.

"Nana will pull weeds for Kouta-San, while he is at school. After Nana feeds Wanta, she has nothing to do."

Kouta smiled, correctly guessing that a lot of questions about 'Fried Rice Boy' were in the offing as well. He mussed Nana's hair.

"It's a deal. Oh, and Auntie? Could we borrow some lemon juice to add to Nyu's shampoo? It lightens her hair color to look less like a weird dye job."

Nana puzzled.

"Why do that to Nyu-chan's hair?"

Kouta set the stage for a realization on Nana's part.

"Well, it's not like there's any other pink-haired girls in Kamakura. Maybe not even in Kanagawa."

Nana looked at Emi, and it was a look of slight disappointment. Emi accepted this as a price to be paid.

_**2**_

Summer became Fall, and this meant classes for most of those at Maple House, while Emi sealed up summer-only rentals and fortified winter-only ones to survive another seacoast cold snap. Years before, the summer-only ones had seen some break-ins, as had others. But they were quietly done, thick locks cut silently and incredibly cleanly, like a laser beam was supposed to do, though Emi had never seen such a thing outside of TV shows and movies. She also had to commend her invader on one front - they were a clean sort themselves, never leaving so much as a hair or any sort of fingerprints. The police had feared the worst, that "Kaze No Kaede" had returned, but those murders flatly stopped after poor Kanae and Junichiro were killed, and they had never resumed. The sudden savage increase in heart problems and crib deaths made some of the local gossip hens say that "Kaede" had simply gotten cleverer, which Emi grimly and silently laughed off, thinking that it was remarkable more salary-men and women didn't have heart failure, and that the way some young women drank and smoked and worse, it was a wonder they could conceive a child in the first place.

One of her greatest joys and treasures in this effort was beside her as Thanksgiving approached. While of course the day had less meaning then it did in its country of origin, Emi planned to make this one special. A group of female US Army officers, looking for a weekend safe haven (though when asked what from, they talked about 'loose lips ruin careers') rented one of her all-year places for a good price, and helped her get some good-sized turkeys as a result. No KFC for them that year, though Yuka would likely pout if not given her popcorn chicken. Then again, this was her Yuka, prone to pout.

"Auntie, this place seems familiar to me, somehow."

Nyu, who often had nothing to do but sit in class while switching between Kouta and Yuka's custody, jumped at the chance to help with the rental changeover work.

"Auntie, how long has this TV been here?"

It was an old set, and the VCR in it was likely on its last legs. Still, springing for a new unit seemed a bit much, and those newfangled disc players just seemed to send the price out of sight.

"Fifteen years at this point, Nyu-chan. Why do you ask?"

Nyu touched the screen, briefly leaving a wet handprint on it.

"I once watched Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer on one like this. I remember hating all of the other reindeer for being so mean. Even Santa was mean-and he was supposed to protect everyone in that place."

If Kouta's memories showed occasional signs of returning, Nyu's never did, at least not that anyone had mentioned. Yet before Emi could decide whether or not to pursue this, Nyu asked a simple yet also an impossible question.

"Auntie, where do I come from? Why are Nana-chan and I the only ones born with horns?"

Emi gave what she had in this.

"I don't know, honey. I've kept watch on the news, and listened to people talk. But I've gotten nothing."

Nyu looked outside as she cleaned one of the windows and oiled its frame, still using weighted pullies to support the structure's locking mechanism.

"I heard at the college that a place nearby here is called 'The Valley Of The Horned Ones', and that a prominent family, using an abbreviation of that name, came from there."

Emi was glad she was only holding a screwdriver, and not a hammer, when Nyu said that.

"Silly me, dropping that. Well, people take names from odd things. My husband's family name means 'True Ones' for example."

Nyu now looked several kinds of helpless and vulnerable, and Emi by instinct opened her arms and held her. Within months, the tenderness and warmth of this memory would drive Emi into the greatest rage of her entire life.

"Auntie? They say a demon race lived in that place, and I think I remember it, too. Is that the truth then? Am I a demon? Will I end up killing lots of people?"

They had only to clean up the basement storage area, so Emi sat them down to take a break. While such areas were a great damned oddity in a seaside community, her ancestors never built any house anywhere that did not have one, with the history of the same valley Nyu mentioned being the reason. Only Maple House, built as a seasonal inn and restaurant, was the exception. The not-inconsiderable expense of reinforcing the basements against moisture was one a family once hunted was always willing to pay.

"Nyu-chan, those demons or whatever they were are legends. Dumb stories people tell. People have been born with horns, tails, extra fingers and toes, and that was before atomic bombs and pollution. Humans are just really, really dumb, and we'll all be lucky if someone else doesn't take over for us. God says in the Old Testament that the world for him is like a potter's clay jar, and if he doesn't like how it comes out of the kiln, he can break it and start over. People worry about how dumb we're being as a race, and so anyone different who shows up makes them nervous that the Big Landlord is cancelling the lease agreement. Hmph! It would serve some right."

Nyu looked at Emi in horror, though in another part of her soul, grim words were heard.

_*Heh. I think I could even like this chick. Not that it'll help her, when the time comes.*_

"No! Auntie, you mustn't say that! If God did something like that-it could hurt Kouta!"

Once more, while Nyu showed all at Maple House deep love and affection (more than Emi knew, and sometimes even too much), there was no doubt who she loved first and best of all.

"A singer once said that God makes his plans, and the information is unavailable to the mortal man. But by keeping to the best things in life, all the positives, we can clean up this sorry world-and, more importantly, that filthy basement!"

Nyu laughed at the joke, but a noise outside stopped Emi's laughter. A glance outside showed a stretch limousine, and this was no rental. Emi's face drained of color.

"Was it this year? He made no appointment."

"Auntie?"

Emi made a move that, months later, she would most certainly not regret.

"Nyu, who am I?"

Nyu knew what she was being asked.

"You are the Mama of Maple House. Even above Yuka-Chan."

Emi was kind of surprised by that last part. But Yuka was getting good at what she did.

"Good. Now, first, as Mama, I have no demon-daughters. Those demons are legend. Remember that. They are a bunch of stories some dumb people told themselves for comfort."

"But Nana-chan and I aren't lege-"

"Shut Up! Now, you get in the basement, go behind some filled tall boxes, and put an empty tall box over you. Above all, do not speak, do not move, and try not to breathe. Go-NOW!"

Nyu was badly confused, but did what she was told. When a voice in the area above her was heard, whatever in her remained of Lucy at that time also urged her to keep quiet, as did a third voice that had not yet heard a sick offer of alliance.

So Nyu kept quiet and was not discovered. But at some point, she once again peed herself.

Upstairs, Emiko opened the door. Waiting in front of it was a man of wealth and taste. Beside him was a far more obvious monster.

"Emiko-San. As per the dowry agreement of your grandmother's day, I have come to pay a courtesy call and take an accounting of your properties inherited from our family, to see that their administration brings only positive word to our good name."

He was a large, and a tall man, and looked like he could, if willing to pack some carbs in, take the title of Yokozuna.

"Please enter one of the least of our family's inherited holdings, honored Kakuzawa-Dono."

The man known to some as Minister Hideki Kakuzawa turned to his dark-clad companion, who, if he hadn't exuded ugly danger, would have had Emiko laughing her ass off at his appearance.

_*Alucard Much, Baka? Stephen King-San called from Maine. He wants his character back at The Dark Tower, ASAP.* _

"You. Wait outside and turn away any interruptions."

For all the fear he seemed to like creating, this one seemed poutier than Yuka at her worst.

"But Onii-San, I want to stay!"

Kakuzawa backhanded the sorriest branch of the family back out the front door of the cottage.

"You want to stay and stare at our cousin's chest. Well firstly, you have stared, so keep the memory vivid. Secondly, being above middle school, is our cousin not too old for your tastes?"

Kakuzawa slammed the inner door shut, turned and shrugged.

"He is good at finding things - or so am I told. Our late uncle made me promise not to put him down, and so, my hands are tied."

He sat down without being bid to, though, as head of the family's main branch, he had that right.

"Kakuzawa-Dono, I was not expecting this visit, and so do not have my financial records for these properties on hand."

Which, she reasoned correctly, was what the bastard wanted. In fact, he waved her words off.

"Not needed, Emiko-San. I have already seen them. An arrangement I have with local bureaucrats, ever since I made a sizable donation to their infrastructure for foundlings and unfortunate children with no families. You are to be commended. Even in this sorry excuse for an economy, you show your heritage by making almost all your properties profitable, even after taxes and upkeep."

As the space heroes young Kouta adored once said, she had a bad feeling about this. Like those warriors, she would not be proven wrong.

"Kakuzawa-Dono said almost all. Is there a distress I have been lax in taking note of?"

Like sighting a bad thing inside a nightmare, the honored intruder moved right where Emi most feared he would.

"Lax? No. I believe you simply made a choice, and I wish to hear of it. One of your most valuable properties is producing no income at all, yet its upkeep is obviously maintained, without also being a drain on your other profits."

With a slight smile that otherwise might have seemed charming, the devil who wanted to be God made a deceptively simple request that Emi was bound by heritage to fulfill until he was satisfied.

"Emiko-San, please tell me all about the residents of Maple House."


End file.
